If you had trouble logging onto PSN over the weekend rest assured you were not alone. The network was attacked in an attempt to artificially overload it with high traffic. A group calling themselves LizardSquad are taking credit for the attack and targeted other services as well such as battle.net, League of Legends and Path of Exile. These DDoS or denial-of-service attacks are carried out by bombarding a service with enough communications requests to artificially strain the network and make it unavailable to legitimate users.

“Like other major networks around the world, the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network have been impacted by an attempt to overwhelm our network with artificially high traffic.
Although this has impacted your ability to access our network and enjoy our services, no personal information has been accessed.
We will continue to work towards fixing this issue and hope to have our services up and running as soon as possible.
We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.”

A minor inconvenience was caused but it’s really not the worst PSN users have had to deal with. However, things go awry when internet tough guys start taking things into the real world.

.@AmericanAir We have been receiving reports that @j_smedley's plane #362 from DFW to SAN has explosives on-board, please look into this.

LizardSquad tweeted a bomb threat to American Airlines yesterday and while this might seem completely random, it wasn’t. Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley happened to be booked on that flight.

Smedley was initially unaware of the cause for his flight’s diversion and delay but later found out that US federal authorities had stepped in. The FBI is now investigating the matter to find the source of the threat.

“The FBI is currently handling the situation at this time. We have no further comment,” Sony told GameInformer.

Smedley doesn’t seem too shaken up about it. Apart from a delayed flight he didn’t go through much.

Yes. My plane was diverted. Not going to discuss more than that. Justice will find these guys.

LizardSquad doesn’t even seem to have kinship with its contemporaries such as Anonymous. Instead, the group has been discredited in black and white hat circles for taking false credit and taking matters too far with the bomb threat. The alleged real perpetrator has taken offense to LizardSquad’s false claims and has reportedly taken revenge by revealing members’ details to authorities and Anonymous.

It’s certainly tasteful to be making bomb threats ahead of 9/11. Stay classy, LizardSquad. Let’s hope we don’t hear more from these clowns anytime soon.

In the wake of this one has to wonder just how much Sony stepped up their security following the hack by Anonymous that toppled PSN a few years ago.

Also, does anyone else have The Doors’ The Lizard King in their head now?